In Tenn., GM workers want to go ‘small’

SPRING HILL, Tenn. (AP) — Two decades after General Motors Corp. launched Saturn as its import-fighting, small-car division in Tennessee, GM has 2,500 workers at the Spring Hill assembly plant sweating, worried they might not get the call when the next experiment begins.

“We are the small-car plant,” said Cliff Goff, 53, a longtime employee at Spring Hill who has worked for GM since 1975. “We introduced ourselves to the world as the Saturn company that was going to build the small car in America and be competitive with the Japanese.”

GM is planning a new subcompact to compete with foreign models and has decided to build it in the U.S. instead of China. Workers at Spring Hill, where GM in 1990 started production of the Saturn brand, are on a short list along with Orion Township, Mich., and Janesville, Wis.

GM built the Spring Hill facility to make sure Saturn, at first its own division, wasn’t too heavily influenced by Detroit. They billed it as a “different kind of car company,” with a no-haggle sales technique and buyer- loyalty gimmicks like the folksy homecoming picnics that drew owners to the Tennessee plant site.

The separation was short-lived, though, and GM soon absorbed leadership of Saturn back into its headquarters.

Just two years ago, after GM made a failed attempt to go upscale with bigger Saturns, the Spring Hill plant about 40 miles south of Nashville lost the brand. GM announced Friday that it is selling the Saturn brand to auto racing titan Roger Penske’s Penske Automotive Group Inc., which plans to continue selling GM-made vehicles but eventually will partner with foreign carmakers.

Since a $600 million overhaul of the Spring Hill plant, spurred partly by state tax credits, workers there have been building the eight-seat Chevrolet Traverse.

GM’s cost-cutting plan, announced last Monday as it filed for bankruptcy protection, identifies Spring Hill and Orion as plants to be put on standby next fall, with Traverse production moving to Lansing, Mich.

Republican U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, who as governor brought the automotive industry to Tennessee and in the 1980s recruited GM to build the plant just down the road from Nissan’s U.S. base in Smyrna — said Spring Hill is an easier choice for GM now. Alexander said Tennessee is a right-to-work-law state, has a record of proven success with Saturn and Nissan and has Volkswagen building a plant in Chattanooga. He said Spring Hill has an experienced work force and is close to hundreds of auto suppliers.